GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST TROLLEY RIDES:​Honoring the Old-Fashioned Pastime of Telling Ghost Stories on Christmas Eve ﻿Co-Sponsored with Mid-Atlantic Center for the Arts and Humanities

ELTC continues the Victorian custom of telling ghost stories at Christmastime with Ghosts of Christmas Past Trolley Rides. Listen to classic American holiday ghost stories, told (memorized not read) by a costumed performer in a dark trolley, while the twinkling lights of the beautifully decorated homes and streets are seen through the windows of the heated vehicle. ﻿Started in 2007, this has become a favorite holiday tradition for many, and tickets quickly sell out.

This year's storyteller, Susan Tischler, pictured here, is telling two tales. The Christmas Masquerade, written by Mary Wilkins Freeman, is about an unusual costumer. When children don his creations, they behave like the outfit, i.e., pauper’s children dressed as princesses behave like royalty, and banker’s daughters behave like shepherdesses. Nathaniel Hawthorne is known for his eerie, supernatural writing style, and The Snow Image is no exception. Did Violet and Sam create a real child out of snow, or was it just their imagination at work?

Other tales that have also been performed are Old Applejoy’s Ghost by Frank R. Stockton and The Twelfth Guest by Mary Wilkins Freeman. The Stockton story is about a jolly spirit who convinces his grand niece to persuade her uncle to celebrate Christmas in the mansion the way in which it used to be celebrated. In The Twelfth Guest, a young woman, a stranger, appears in time for Christmas dinner at the Child’s home. She ends up staying long enough to right some wrongs, and then disappears. All of the stories have been adapted for storytelling by ELTC's artistic director, Gayle Stahlhuth.

The "spirited" thirty-minute rides begin and end at the Washington Street Mall Information Booth. Tickets are only $12 for adults and $8 for children, ages 3-12, and run several nights a week, beginning the weekend before Thanksgiving, and running through the New Year’s Day weekend.Reservations are strongly suggested and can be made by calling MAC at 884-5404. If tickets are available the day of the tour, they will be sold at the Washington Street Mall Information Booth.

﻿Susan Tischler recently performed in her own play Meet the Locals for SPQR Theatre in Cape May. For this theater, she also performed in Calliope Rose and The Wreck of the Spanish Armada. She was commissioned by ELTC to write and perform Helpful Hints based on Mae Savell Croy's Putnam's Household Handbook (1916). Directed by Karen Case Cook it premiered at The Chalfonte and was part of ELTC's mainstage Season in 2011. She was in The People of Cape May vs. Johan Van Buren, written by Dutch TV personality Judge Frank Visser, produced by ELTC and directed by Gayle Stahlhuth as part of the 400th Anniversary of the Founding of Cape May. Recently for ELTC, she portrayed Enid Stonor in The Adventure of the Speckled Band, performed radio-style. Other credits include portraying Minnie Pearl and co-producing Barry’s Cape May Opry and Barry’s Christmas Opry, proceeds of the latter go to the West Cape May Christmas Parade. Susan is the co-owner of Kaleidoscope and Just for Laughs on the Washington Street Mall in Cape May, and writes for Exit Zero. Her reminiscence of her father, Fred Brown, a coal miner from Pittsburgh, was included in the late Tim Russert’s book Wisdom of Our Fathers, published in 2006. ﻿

ELTC's programs are made possible in part through funding from The NJ State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of The National Endowment for the Arts, The NJ Department of State, Division of Travel and Tourism, the generosity of our Season Partners, and the generosity of many patrons.